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'News, Views & Tips From Recruitment Matters International'
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Recruitment Matters International Newsletter: April 2017



Contents

Welcome to our April newsletter
Recruitment Marketing Matters

Candidate Care - it's a sprint, a marathon and everything in between
How do you ‘Trump’ the world’s largest tax haven?
Trust me, I’m a recruiter
Mind the pay gap!
What's new?
Contact us
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Welcome to our April newsletter
Welcome from the Recruitment Matters International team!
 
As ever, there are some updates on what we’ve been up to and our plans for you over the coming months – for example, see ‘What’s New?’ for details on our new training dates in Bristol during July. We feature external contributions, too, and would welcome more from you for future newsletters.

We open with ‘Recruitment Marketing Matters,’ our monthly column from Alastair Campbell, MD, The Ideal Marketing Company. In this article, Alastair talks about how to manage publicity if things go bad (think United Airlines).

This month our CEO Warren Kemp emphasises the importance of great candidate care and he challenges you to leave a legacy.

Contributor Mike Phillips, ItsInternational looks at the implications for international business if Mr Trump creates the world’s largest tax haven.

I’ve written a wistful article on trust prompted by the increasing concerns we all have with cyber security breaches.

We also have the latest article from our legal expert, Simon Bloch, Partner, Knights Professional Services along with his colleague Alexandra Bullmore who highlight new reporting obligations which have come into force (currently just for large companies…..) relating to male and female employee remuneration.

We very much like this to be an interactive newsletter and welcome your comments and feedback and will be happy to feature your contributions on important industry issues and your advice on how to improve the success and professionalism of our marketplace. As you know, in return, we show our gratitude by featuring a link to your company as a contributor to this publication.

Recruitment Matters International has a simple underlying philosophy to everything that we do, and that is, by helping each other to improve, we all stand to benefit in this large, dynamic and ever evolving industry.

Please send your potential editorial contributions to ken@recruitmentmatters.com .




Recruitment Marketing Matters



Contributor: Alastair Campbell, MD, The Ideal Marketing Company

Monthly ideas on ways to market your recruitment business and achieve better results.

No such thing as bad publicity

For many recruitment agencies, generating publicity in local media or in trade titles is a great idea. It can raise awareness, promote projects and create the impression of expertise. Well, imagine publicity in most national newspapers on radio and TV across the world. How great would that be?

It’s a well worked cliché that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Really? Ask United Airlines. In case you missed this story, United Airlines have been in the news this month over their customer care policy.
 
Essentially, the airline uses a very industry standard policy of overbooking by 5% on their flights. That’s because normally about 5% of people don’t turn up. On the occasion when everybody does, the offer goes out to people to upgrade to first class on their next flight or other incentives are offered to keep people happy.
 
So far so good, but what happens when nobody want to swap their flight? Well you might imagine that offering more incentives would do the trick but – sticking to company policy apparently – when there were no takers, 4 passengers was asked to leave. However, one of the passengers, Dr David Dao, refused to leave and so airline staff started to drag him off the plane. The method of his expulsion from the plane was so severe it meant that his bloodied face was seen by other passengers, several of whom videoed the incident on their phones and were heard to gasp in horror at what happened to their fellow passenger, who needed facial reconstructive surgery after the incident.
 
“Fly the friendly skies”
 
An embarrassing incident to be sure. Given that United Airlines slogan is ‘Fly the Friendly Skies’ it seems especially ironic. Investors agreed and the share price dropped wiping $1.4 Billion off the value of the company.
 
So what is the moral of the story - aside from not attacking your customers? Well, I’d say that the following lessons could be learnt:
 
  1. Have a clear policy in place that would prevent this situation or anything close to it from ever happening.
  2. Always treat customers with respect. One unhappy customer can do a lot of damage. This has always been the case, but now with social media you can multiply the problem by 100 if the video or photographs of a situation have been captured. It was the videos of this incident that made it huge, not the incident itself.
  3. If your company looks like it has slipped up, investigate immediately and then apologise fully.
  4. If you have a slogan that emphasises a particular part of your business – (e.g. being friendly helpful, reliable) then make sure that your staff embrace it to their core and make your business about this USP. If not, then you are setting yourself up for trouble.
  5. Have an emergency PR policy in place. When bad things happen – and let’s hope that they don’t happen to you – make sure that somebody from your company has undergone media training or you work with a PR company that has experience in handling a hostile media.
  6. Don’t stop communicating. If your share price falls or a key member of staff has suddenly departed, keep up your normal methods of communication as well as talking about the particular incident.
  7. Finally, after something has gone wrong, examine exactly what went wrong - so it doesn’t happen again – or an even worse situation comes along. Then look at how other things could go wrong in the future and work on ways of getting better in those areas, too.
Any industry where you are working with people for most of the time is especially prone to problems and complaints. Don’t let an unusual incident within your recruitment business get out of hand and tarnish your hard won reputation. With some planning and preparation you should be able to minimise any negative situation – or, even better, prevent it from happening in the first place.

Alastair Campbell is MD of The Ideal Marketing Company, an award winning full service marketing, digital and PR agency that works with the recruitment sector as well as many others. To claim a free, no obligation 1 hour marketing overview of your recruitment business, call 01858 445 543. 




Candidate Care - it's a sprint, a marathon and everything in between



Contributor: Warren Kemp, CEO & Trainer, Recruitment Matters International

Your phone rings. It’s a stranger asking to speak with you. You say hello and ask how you can help. He tells you his friend has suggested that he calls you as he is looking for a new job and hopes you can help him. You ask the friend’s name. You search for the name on your CRM system.

Turns out, it’s not someone you placed. It’s not even someone you had out to interview. He has been on your system for two years. Sure, you remember him but there’s nothing out of the ordinary in your notes. And that’s the point. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Rewind two years. What did you do that was so amazing that you are now getting his friend call you up? Or, more importantly, what have you been doing throughout the two years when you never placed this guy that he has recommended you to his friend?

Work out what you need to do as an individual, as a team, as a business and as a brand to get the above scenario playing out time and time again and you’ve cracked the Candidate Care Conundrum.

25% of people are actively looking for work at any one time and 35% of people are passively looking for their absolute right job. The competition to have that 60% of the market choose you as their recruiter of choice (and to stay their recruiter of choice) is a battle you can win no matter how long you have been in recruitment, how big or small you are or how much of a marketing budget you have. You can ‘outcare’ your competitors.

The question is, how much do you want to be the recruiter of choice for your candidates? If you want it badly enough, you will find a way and without spending huge amounts of money. I challenge you to take a couple of days out of your business, away from the daily stuff and work on how you will ‘outcare’ your competitors when it comes to candidates. Make a real name for yourself and, when the time is right, leave a legacy behind you.

Warren Kemp is CEO and trainer with Recruitment Matters International. For more tips, advice and information on Recruitment Matters visit http://recruitmentmatters.com/  telephone 0800 0749 289/ +44 (0)1529 410586 or email info@recruitmentmatters.com.





How do you 'Trump' the world's largest tax haven?



Contributor: Mike Phillips, ItsInternational

It is looking increasingly likely that vibrant low tax regimes such as Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands are soon to be superseded by the USA when it becomes the world’s largest tax haven.

The Republican Party majority in Congress wants a ‘Border Adjustment Tax’ meaning no tax on exports while imports would still be taxed.  This will trigger a move by American multinationals to manipulate transfer prices (what different branches of one corporation charge each other for exchanged goods and/or services) enabling profits to move artificially back to the USA.

For example, Apple in California could charge its UK subsidiary a substantial price for using its brand and logo which, in turn, reduces the same amount of taxable profit in the UK.  As that charge is deemed an American export, it will not be taxed in the USA.  Conversely, American importers such as the retail giant Walmart gain absolutely nothing.  

Even if this Border Adjustment Tax fails to see the light of day, the Trump administration’s alternative options are equally depressing.  The new government hates any tax on capital.  The President wants a drop in the corporation tax rate from the current 35% to 15%. Such a strategy will warm the hearts of current ‘tax haven’ states such as Delaware, Nevada, New York, Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Theresa May is threatening to make UK corporation tax the lowest in Europe.  She has openly called for a 17% rate by 2020.  Perhaps it will be 15% and introduced much sooner if President Trump does what he says he would do.  

Such tax optimisation can be obstructed, which is good news for the UK and for the EU.  The answer rests in ‘formulary apportionment’, better known as Unitary Taxation.  This is where a country taxes a proportion of the global profits of a corporation based on the number of employees or volume of sales in that country.

For example, if Apple makes 10% of its global sales in the UK, then 10% of its global sales become taxable in the UK.  This approach neutralises any tax optimisation activity in the USA and in the UK. It is impossible for Apple to beat this system by registering disproportionate profits in the USA or in its current ‘haven’, Ireland.  Apple cannot control the location of its UK customers…and cannot move them from the UK to (say) Ireland or the USA.  HMRC knows the value of Apple’s products and services sold in the UK.  This is easily gleaned from the mandatory VAT returns submitted by Apple’s UK customers.

Corporation Tax is not bound by EU law. However, its reform is very relevant to most European countries.  Others such as Ireland, Luxembourg and Switzerland will lose out because ‘accounting manipulation’ has become mainstream business for them.  

If the UK government adopted Unitary Taxation, HMRC would demand of companies working in the UK that they report their global profits and the share of their sales made in the UK.  HMRC could then calculate those companies’ UK tax liabilities.  Any company refusing to provide this accounting information would be denied access to the UK market.  This is surely better than being sucked into a corporation tax war.

If you are either placing or aspiring to place consultants or interims abroad on fixed-term assignments, you can benefit from accessing The Recruiter Helpline – a free service provided by ItsInternational’s Central London offices to subscribers of this Recruitment Matters International newsletter.

For more details, call Mike Phillips on +44 (0)20 7477 2660 or email mikep@itsinternational.ltd.uk




Trust me, I'm a recruiter



Written by RMI’s MD, Ken Kemp.

Or, in our case, “trust us, we’re a recruitment training company.”

We had a highly productive internal meeting here recently with key members of our management team. The agenda included the usual topics such as a financial review, how are things looking for the rest of the year (very good, by the way), marketing plans and new ideas, etc.

However, there was a new subject on the agenda – cyber security. As you will probably know, new GDPR (data protection) regulations come into effect in May 2018, so we all need to become more vigilant and, where necessary, take action in a number of areas to lock down all sensitive data e.g. bank details. Once you start thinking about it, though, it reaches well beyond the office – into the home, the cloud, your suppliers and more. Frankly, it all seems a bit of a pain, but, of course, quite sensible in our increasing digitised and, therefore, vulnerable world. Besides, a fine of 4% of turnover if you are subject to a hack is best avoided, if at all possible.

FYI, some of the actions we’ll be undertaking include regular changing of all passwords and writing to key suppliers for reassurance on their security policies.

We hear more and more that what seems like the inexorable increase in technology will result in the loss of human jobs, along with the changes in industry to accommodate a workforce increasingly comprising of robots. If process-driven jobs can be broken down into tiny byte-sized pieces of computer code, with the subsequent erosion of the value of manpower where does that leave human interaction in the overall scheme of things?

What happens to trust when the digital workplace seems so fraught with risk? Where do relationships count for something in the bond between client and supplier?

In our training courses, we talk about developing relationships through ‘KLT’:

Know
Like
Trust

Is KLT becoming increasingly obsolete? Hopefully not. Surely not in the world of recruitment which - for as long as humans are required to fulfil at least some jobs in the future - is a people business. All the technological support available has certainly made the job potentially more efficient. But… You can’t possibly decide on the right candidate for the job without the human element. Have they got the right personality or drive, what’s the chemistry like, etc?

Which brings me back to RMI as a recruitment training company. Thankfully, we have many regular clients who work with us because they know, like and trust us. Not just our management team and support staff but, critically, our trainers. In fact, every step along the way from their initial enquiry through to training delivery and beyond. We care deeply about the relationship we have with our clients – not just in terms of one company to another – but as people, too. That’s what makes for lasting relationships and long-standing partnerships.

Ken Kemp is MD of Recruitment Matters International. For more information on Recruitment Matters visit http://recruitmentmatters.com/  telephone 0800 0749 289 / +44 (0)1529 410586 or email ken@recruitmentmatters.com.




Mind the pay gap!



Contributors: Simon Bloch, Partner and Alexandra Bullmore, Paralegal, Knights Professional Services

New reporting obligations came into force from April, with the first reports to be published no later than April 2018. Employers with 250 or more employees are legally obliged to calculate and report publically on the pay gap between their male and female employees. Although the obligation is currently for larger employers, the government may extend this to employers with fewer than 250 employees in due course.

Affected employers must publish:
  • The overall gender pay gap figures for relevant employees, calculated using both the mean and median average hourly pay.
  • The proportion of men and women in each of four pay bands (quartiles), based on the employer's overall pay range. This will show how the gender pay gap differs across the organisation, at different levels of seniority.
  • Information on the employer's gender bonus gap (that is, the difference between men and women's mean and median bonus pay over a 12-month period).
  • The proportion of male and female employees who received a bonus in the same 12-month period.

The calculations are relatively straightforward, but there are various issues which make the obligation much more confusing such as who counts as an employee and what ‘normal’ pay is inclusive of. For more top tips and further guidance on how you can be preparing for gender pay gap reporting, do join us at one of our Knights HR Evolution Forum sessions.

This article is for general guidance only and should not be used for any other purpose.

This article was prepared by Simon Bloch, who is a Partner at Knights and specialises in advising recruitment agencies, and Alexandra Bullmore. To contact Simon, please email simon.bloch@knights1759.co.uk or call 0161 667 9205 to discuss any matter in this article or any recruitment issue at further length.




What’s new?

We continue to consider adding a new locations and course topics to our repertoire. If you have any suggestions please email ken@recruitmentmatters.com. For example, thanks to your input, we’re going to be running two courses in Bristol during July – The Billing Manager on July 5th and Candidate Sourcing on July 11th.

We continue to lead the way with our ever-popular one day open course on Executing A Successful Head-Hunting Assignment . Also, the flipside of the coin, Selling Executive Search and Winning Retained & Exclusive Assignments (next date in London is May 10th). These two courses and our Candidate Sourcing course are currently enjoying a high level of bookings.

A reminder that we run a very popular one day management course which has experienced very strong demand recently for both open course and in-house training: Stewart Stone’s The Billing Manager – managing people & motivating teams. It’s great to welcome the continued steady stream of consultants who are moving up to management positions.

Don’t forget that our ‘Recruitment Fundamentals’ one day open courses are just £279+VAT for  Candidate Control, Screening & Interviewing, Business Development & Key Account Management, Running A Successful Temp Desk, as well as for Candidate Sourcing.  All of these open courses will be running throughout 2017, including our Two Day Introduction To Recruitment at the outstanding rate of just £499+VAT! Our next induction course is in Sheffield on May 8/9th followed by London on June 1/2nd.

In order to optimise your learning experience, our courses are purposely run with small delegate numbers and are generally capped at 12. Book now to avoid disappointment! See here for our latest training dates right through until July.

Finally, remember, if you can’t come to us, we can come to you to deliver an in-house version of any of our courses to meet your specific objectives or, indeed, write a training programme specifically for you and your team. Contact ken@recruitmentmatters.com for more information.
                    
For more information on these courses and our other services and products, visit www.recruitmentmatters.com, email info@recruitmentmatters.com or call Julie or Ken on 0800 0749289 or, if you’re overseas, 0044 1529 410586.





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Tel: 0800 0749289/0044 / (0)1529 410586
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Email: info@recruitmentmatters.com .


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